I was horrified and aghast as I watched. What was going on? Why did Japanese leaders so readily send their soldiers to be massacred in battle? Five years later, I learned that an identical battle strategy was used by the French, British, Germans and Russians in the First World War—resulting in far greater carnage.

For the four years of 1914-1918, most of the nations of the world were embroiled in this futile struggle. On every front, the military strategy of “offensive at all costs” was employed. Young men were required to get out of trenches en masse and move toward enemy trenches—where they were cut down by machine gun fire and artillery shells.

Based on my research on the First World War, I began using words like “strange” and “weird” to characterize the phenomenon of warfare. I was surprised—not only by the extraordinarily destructive battle strategies and mass killing that characterized the war—but also by how casually events are written about. What occurred during the First World War was extraordinary, yet historians do not write as if anything extraordinary had taken place.

Gradually, I realized that historians were unable to explain what had happened during the First World War. They could not account for the massive carnage; nor could they tell us why nations and their leaders persisted in employing a battle-strategy that was futile and self-destructive. After four years of fighting, little had changed from a political or military point of view.

The great weakness of Western thought is its assumption of rationality. In spite of 100 years of Freud, political scientists and historians still imagine that people do things for “real” reasons. People have yet to grasp the irrational or unconscious sources of behavior.

In the movie about the Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese General receives a note from a courier in the midst of his conversation with the Emperor. The General bows to the Emperor and begins weeping profusely. The Emperor puts his hands on the General’s head to console him and asks, “What is it? What has happened?” Continuing to bow and weep, the General says, “My first son has been killed. Very gratifying! It’s an honor for a soldier to die in battle. Very gratifying!”

When Saddam Hussein learned of the death of his two sons, Uday and Qusay—killed by US forces on July 29, 2004—he declared to his people:

“I bring you the glad tidings, the honorable news, which is the wish of every sincere citizen. We thank Allah for honoring us with their martyrdom. We sacrifice lives and money for the sake of Allah, Iraq and our nation. If Saddam Hussein had 100 sons other than Uday and Qusay, he would have offered them on the same path.”

The ideology of warfare revolves around sacrificing human beings for the sake of a society’s sacred ideals, e.g., a nation, God, ideology or Emperor. Societies wage war for these entities, which are conceived as greater or more significant than life itself. In the name of these ideas and entities, people are willing to die and to kill.

Later in the movie, the Japanese General tries to motivate his troops to leave their trenches to face Russian machine guns. They are trembling—knowing that their charge will be unsuccessful and that most likely they will be blown to bits. The General comforts them, explaining, “Success is not the purpose. The purpose is to risk your life for your country.”

The history of war is the one of destruction and self-destruction. If we look at war through the lens of rationality, it makes no sense. It seems to be a form of insanity. Billions of dollars are spent, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost and nothing is gained. War seems like a “tale told by an idiot.”

But war does signify something. Perhaps the Japanese General had it right. The purpose of war is not to achieve some definable goal, but precisely to risk—to sacrifice—one’s life for one’s country. People wage war in order to demonstrate that they are devoted to their society’s sacred ideals. Warfare is undertaken to prove that one is faithful to a beloved object.